The priority application claims priority of Japanese Patent Application No. 2004-226614, which is hereby incorporated by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a display apparatus to be mounted on a vehicle, and in particular, the display apparatus to project a combination of direct and reflected images toward an eye range of a vehicle driver. (Here, the eye range is defined as a range of a typical driver's eye position.)
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a display apparatus, in which an image of a second display device buried under an instrument panel is reflected to project toward a vehicle driver, has been mounted on a vehicle. The display apparatus also includes a first display device to display a vehicle speed, various alarms and the like for a vehicle driver as a meter. Namely, the display apparatus displays a combination of direct and reflected images to be seen within an eye range of a vehicle driver.
Incidentally, prior art documents concerning the present invention are, for example, JP-A, 2003-237411 and JP-A, 2002-205571.
The display apparatus described above needs first and second displays for displaying direct and reflected images toward the eye range. Therefore, there are problems that an increase of the number of components, an upsizing of a body, an increase of production cost, and the like of the display apparatus.
On the other hand, common displays today such as a TFT-LCD, a VFD (vacuum fluorescent display) and the like are known to display an image being visible on both front and rear surface thereof. However, only a front surface is currently used as a display surface.
Accordingly, the present invention focuses the ability of the display device to display an image being visible on both the front and rear surfaces of the display device, and an object of the present invention is to provide a display device to display the combination of the images with a single display device for reducing the number of components, miniaturizing the body, and reducing the production cost of the display apparatus.